The transformation of the Globe continues. Designer William Dudley has here given the building an astonishing makeover: it is covered by a canvas awning, the pillars and back wall are swathed in black, cavernous exits seem to lead to the mouth of hell. The result is to lend the space a glowering intimacy entirely appropriate for Lucy Bailey's excellent production of Shakespeare's earliest tragedy.

One of the pleasures of my theatre-going life has been to watch the play's restoration to public favour. Instead of a primitive, Marlovian gore fest, it is now seen as a study in monumental suffering. If I have any cavil about Bailey's production, it is that it doesn't sound the ultimate depths of pain in the great central section where Titus confronts the shocking image of his raped, mutilated daughter. The long, silent entrance of Laura Rees's violated Lavinia chills the blood; but the moment when Titus, son Lucius and brother Marcus compete to chop off their hands as ransom for the old soldier's remaining children is played too easily for tension-relieving laughs.

All else about Bailey's production is first rate. She makes brilliant use of the yard space as a fractious public forum from the first moment when Saturninus and Bassianus are wheeled about on crowd-scattering towers as they compete to be top dog in Rome. Django Bates's score, with its wooden trumpets and nerve-scraping horns, ratchets up the tension: we even hear quivering strings when Lavinia, whose lily hands would "tremble like aspen leaves upon a lute", is solemnly laid out upon the ground. And, even if the laughs come a little prematurely, Bailey invests Titus's climactic revenge upon the barbaric Tamora and her rapacious sons with the right blackish, brackish comedy.

The acting reveals the new strength-in-depth of the Globe team. Douglas Hodge takes great risks as Titus, actually making the gnarled, time-weathered general seem to grow younger as he moves from Senecan victim to pro-active justice seeker; but it pays off handsomely and Hodge is superb in the final section, turning the pie-baking hero into a manic Gordon Ramsay. Patrick Moy effectively plays the emperor, Saturninus, as a youthfully snickering voluptuary, Geraldine Alexander makes a suitably "high- witted" Tamora, and Shaun Parkes invests the villainous Aaron with a wonderfully brazen confidence. But the joy lies in seeing a once-derided play done with such gusto, and the Globe itself acquiring the hermetic darkness of a tragic venue. · Until October 6. Box office: 020-7401 9919.